Perils and promises in strife-torn Kashmir

Stones have been pelted at security forces and slogans have been shouted against the hanging of Afzal Guru in different parts of the Kashmir Valley. These incidents have been few and far between. The reason is the imposition of draconian measures taken to ensure that the situation does not get out of control. Curfew is in place. It was lifted in some places only to be re-introduced. Restrictions continue on local cable television and the Internet services. Newspapers, too, are effectively banned from publication.

So, calm does reign in the Valley. But it is a calm that should induce no sense of complacency, let alone a sense of triumphalism, in the authorities. Rumblings of rage can be heard beneath the blanket of silence. They can be heard by those with ears to hear. Those who ignore them do so at their own peril and at the peril of future prospects of the return of peace to the Valley.

As of now the prospects are grim. Large swathes of the Kashmiri population are convinced that the trial of Guru was flawed and indeed that he was framed by intelligence agencies. Arguments that rubbish these claims – and they aren’t without merit – find no takers. This is even truer of arguments that all legal procedures were followed before sending Guru to the gallows. The fact that his family wasn’t informed well in time about the hanging and that it was not allowed to meet him before the sentence was executed continues to rankle.

In one voice the Kashmiris have demanded that Guru’s mortal remains should be returned to his family so that they can be interred with the appropriate rituals in a grave earmarked for him. Many sections of opinion in the rest of the country have backed the demand. The government must of course weigh the risks involved in accepting it. But it cannot afford to disregard the longer-term advantages. The urgent need is to give civil society in the Valley a powerful reason to help cool tempers. Otherwise it is not just the separatist outfits but also mainstream political parties that will engage in a protracted game of one-upmanship meant to deepen the sense of victim-hood in the Valley.

Some pointers to the fall-out of the hanging of Afzal Guru are writ large on the horizon. A serious move is underway to unite the fractious separatist groups. For years the authorities had banked on the divisions in their ranks to strike a political deal. Those exertions are now likely to end up in smoke. Available evidence suggests that the leader of the hard-liner faction of the Hurriyat, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, would be the biggest beneficiary of the unity drive.

With his uncompromising stand against any concessions to find lasting solutions to the issues confronting the state – including, especially, the political issue – Geelani commands far more respect than the leaders of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat headed by Mirwaiz Omar Farooq. Indeed, the former is favoured by Syed Salahuddin, the supremo of the Kashmiri militant organization based in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

The Pakistani authorities, who molly-coddled the moderates, might have second thoughts too. The ISI in particular is known to believe that once American forces withdraw from Afghanistan, jihadi terror groups will brace themselves to once again sow mayhem in Jammu & Kashmir and in the rest of India. They will count on their sleeper cells and on indigenous radical groups to advance their agenda.

The Valley thus runs the grave danger of being caught in a pincer movement – a united separatist conglomerate within the state and heightened militancy armed and trained from across the border. The major victims of the movement are bound to be the mainstream political parties and those sections of civil society that seek a peaceful, negotiated settlement of all outstanding issues bedeviling the state. Should that happen, their endeavors, undertaken with some degree of success after the violence-prone summer of 2010, to ensure that normalcy prevails in J & K will come to naught.

This harrowing scenario is bound to put to severe test the nerves of the security establishment. And it will set the clock back on other fronts as well: development in particular. That, in turn, will negate the success notched up by several schemes including the formation of panchayats and the promising programme to provide educational and training opportunities to youth. Add to this the real threat that all this poses to relations between J & K’s three regions: the Valley, Jammu and Ladakh. These have been prickly at the best of times.

The next few days and weeks will reveal what the government intends to do to ensure that the worst does not come to pass. It has to strike a fine balance between fighting terror and curbing the influence of the separatists on the one hand and, on the other, to address the political, economic, social and cultural interests, concerns, grievances and aspirations of the people of all the regions in right earnest. This is not a tall order provided the government, along with all stake-holders, shows the requisite amount of courage, imagination and will to meet the freshly-minted challenges in the strife-torn state bordering a hostile neighbour.